


Stand My Ground (in Peace)

by Bai_Marionette



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied miscarriage, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7518364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bai_Marionette/pseuds/Bai_Marionette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angela was no Hero and she knew it – Gabriel’s body proved it. Mercykill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand My Ground (in Peace)

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello overwatch fandom dont mind me dropping this angst here ily all  
> >note: translations are at the end

The situation had been in their favor at first, most of her team were more familiar with the landscape from past missions and explorations. Angela was no exception.

But through no fault of her own or her team’s – things took a turn for the worst. Angela had tried to keep up with her team, supplying aide, following her team members to keep up with the fight when suddenly she had to duck an incoming attack coming from her right. She swooped, barely managing not to scuff to the ground, rolling her feet and switching to her blaster gun. She waited for the dust to settle as she tried to scope out the situation. When nothing happened for a whole ten seconds, she almost thought to lower her weapon but something felt odd.

The air felt stale, far too stiff in her lungs and reminded her of being suffocated.

“Death walks among you.”

Angela swooped down, changing her route, praying that her team would not suffer in her absence. She scaled a building, ducking out of sight and waiting in the dark of the abandoned building. It had been bombed in some previous altercation, the handiwork didn’t resemble any of her teammates, for that she was thankful. But peering down, she saw the abandoned stuffed animal beside a small red patch on the soot-ruined carpet. It turned her slight remorseful expression into a more hardened one. War was such a terrible thing. She should have-

“You made a big mistake in tagging along on this mission,” an all too familiar voice spoke from behind her. It was gravely and deep and made something in her chest do both flips and knots at the same time. She had turned quickly, pointing her blaster gun only to come face to face with two long dark shotguns. Something in her told her that her blaster gun would be useless in comparison but she held them up regardless.

This man did not scare her.  
At least, not anymore.

“Move,” Angela’s demand was smooth and even, her voice had carried well and without a trace of fear. It was for good reason, she tried to tell herself. She was not afraid of him. She would stand up to him, she would stand up for herself and she would not back down. Her old dictum rang almost mockingly in her head, ‘ _Heroes never die!_ ’

But she was no Hero.  
And neither was he.  
At least, not anymore.

“And how would you make me?” The cloaked figure replied, she could hear the sarcasm dripping from behind his mask. “Gonna shoot me with those toys?”

Angela had narrowed her eyes; a second later, she had fired and then sprang for cover. She had seen the masked figure vanish, he had turned into that ugly black smog just as she had predicted and she knew she had seconds to prepare for where he would appear next. She readied her gun. What happened next, she had not predicted.  

The floor underneath her feet collapsed and for a split second, childhood memories flashed before her eyes.

Falling rubble and screaming-  
-was she screaming? -  
-the screaming stopped.

Someone had grabbed her. Someone had grabbed her arm. Someone was hauling her up. And that someone was now looking her dead in the face and she found the moment completely ironic.

“Should be more careful in these parts,” the masked figure started. “Sometimes-”

“What do you want?” Angela was usually never the person to interrupt, but her patience was wearing thin. His presence made her heart ache and her skin crawl. She detested both feelings. But the silence on top of it was making the situation even worse.

“…talk,” the masked figure saw her fingers twitch and set her down on her feet. She quickly put distance between them. He didn’t shorten it, instead, taking a few steps of him back towards the wall. He stood in the darkness, shadowing almost obscuring his form completely. “I just wanted to talk.”

“You have had ample opportunity-” Angela started to say.

The air got a bit colder, evidence that the man was also losing patience. He tried to speak again, “If you would just-”

“I don’t have to do anything you say!” the winged woman shouted. Her staff was in her grasp; it may not have been modified to act as a weapon but she wanted something in her hands. Her blaster was some dozen feet below her with the new hole in the floor. She felt heat behind her eyes but refused to let any of the tears forth. This man would not be her downfall again. She would stand up for herself, god damn it all.

The figure went quiet for a breath, then said, “Not a thing, huh?”

Angela tensed but held her staff at the ready. She could stop him at a distance, block him from getting any closer, stall for time until her someone from her team realized her absence. She hated being saved but-

“Not even meet me at the altar?” It wasn’t a question. It was more than an accusation. It was the spearhead that the woman had dreaded and knew was coming. “You couldn’t do that for me, mi querida?”

There was no altar because there had been no wedding. There could not have been a wedding if the groom was dead. Dead some few days before their big day and only a few more days before she could announce good news for their family and friends. But she had not been wed on that day and she had lost that miracle some few weeks later during her mourning.

“Do not call me that,” Angela said. Such bitter memories were reflected in the coldness inflicted into her voice. “You do not have that right anymore.”

“Of course not,” he mocked, coming forward despite how her staff was raised. He stopped within a good few inches of its point. “Just as I am pretty damned sure I didn’t have the right to pull your ass back from a possible death back there.”

“So you’re a hero now?” She mocked.

“No more a hero than you,” he returned.

Angela went quiet at that and so did he, the silence hung there. It was like a dangling noose between the two of them. Swinging back and forth during their discussion, just waiting to find its victim – but Angela refused. She refused. She would keep refusing until her point was made clear enough-

The mask was removed and Angela felt her heart twist.  
It was Gabriel and yet not.

This man had red eyes; Gabriel’s eyes shone like precious onyx stones. Red eyes glowed like neon; Gabriel’s shone from within his kindred soul – the soul she had fell in love with. When Gabriel had breathed, she remembered smelling cinnamon whiskey and dried mango; when this man breathed, she smelt death on the tendrils of black smog coming out in thin wisps from his mouth. When Gabriel smiled, he had smiled with his whole face, full lips pulled apart and eyes crinkling at the corners. When he laughed, it reminded her of the drums in folk music, lively and something fun to dance to. She loved dancing with Gabriel.

Angela remembered Gabriel’s nightmares from their shared nights together, sometimes he had bags under his eyes after the rougher nights but he’d still smile afterwards because he would wake up safe – not on a battlefield, not under fire from gangs in rural Mexico and nowhere near anything that could harm or scare him. Gabriel had looked at Angela like a beacon of safety those nights and she had felt like a treasure.

But this man?

This man was not Gabriel. He was not her beloved. He was not her Gabriel.

This man - this imposter  has hooded eyes that were dark and circled like he hasn't’t seen good sleep in months. The corner of his lips is peeled back like a badly torn piece of paper, revealing sharp incisors and burnt flesh barely holding onto what remained of the right side of his jaw. His skin is waxy in appearance and almost gray underneath his skin pigment. 

This man looked like death itself, not like the man Angela had fallen in love with. This was not the man she had fallen in love with. Although the move to remove his mask may have had good intentions, it had only solidified her stance that this man was an imposter trying to wear the face of her late beloved.

Angela did not feel like a treasure under his gaze; she felt like prey.

“You wear flesh wrongly,” it was practically a snarl and frankly, Angela might have looked back and been shocked at her tone being so cold. “You should not be alive.”

The man said nothing, only stared at her, the mask dissipating into much like the smog spilling from his lips. He didn’t even blink and the winged woman felt more unnerved by his stare than the metal claws he was using to gently push aside her staff.

Angela had to look up at him, face slipping from its hardened expression to a more distraught one. Flashbacks of her childhood, of her early career as a surgeon and then even the early years of Overwatch – before finally the end of Overwatch as she had thought back then; the day she had pulled her best friend from the rubble, barely breathing and almost lifeless, as she tried to call for help and covered herself in the blood as she had tried to save him. She had tried to talk to him, tried to keep him focused, even as he kept staring at her. He had just kept staring.

Blood had been marring Gabriel’s features back then, there was just so much blood, more than Angela had expected from his wounds and more than she had ever wanted to see come out of him in general. She had not been able to finally access the damage, but just the look in his eyes was enough. He knew he was dying. He also knew she was trying to put dead blood back into an even more dead body.

Gabriel Reyes had been dead in her arms before he could even get out his last words. She had tried her staff. She had tried everything in her immediate packs for health. Nothing brought the life back to his eyes. She had tried to kiss him back awake like her parents had told her in bedtime stories. She had tried to rock his upper body in her arms and pat his face like she did when he had thrashing nightmares.

But Gabriel Reyes was dead and he never woke up.

She could feel the hairs on her arm rise.  
She could still feel the blood on her hands.  
She could still feel the weight of that lifeless body in her arms again-

The world had heard her Valkyrie call twice then.  
Once for her parents’ death and now for her beloved, Gabriel.

It would be months before Angela could stomach her own grief and guilt over his death to see hia grave. It had been a sunny day when she went. Pretty, almost as pretty as the gravesite. She could still smell the flowers she had placed on that grave, the contrast of the white and golden tulips next to the headstone carved into the shape of an angel baring a sword. Gabriel, the Archangel. Her Gabriel, Overwatch’s second-in-command. Dead.

Angela could feel her heartrate racing in her ears, anxiety picking up once more as the man reached for her-

“You monster!” She had attacked blindly, trying to crack the man’s skull with her staff, it was hard enough. She kept hitting something, but she had squeezed her eyes shut. Anxiety blooming in her chest and bile pushing up her throat. She felt ill. “Who even– _what are you_?”

There was no answer and Angela’s grief was coming back in waves, forcing her limbs to keep hitting. She hated violence. But she hated this imposter even more. He was wearing Gabriel’s skin like it was his own.

Angela could hear her staff protesting being used like it was, but she kept going. She was furious. She was sobbing. She was angry. She wanted answers. “Answer me! Answer me! Answer me, _erhöre mich, Gott verdammt!_ ”

Angela made to bring down the staff one more time but instead, it was meant with metal claws and she saw her prized weapon snap in half, sparks coming off in bright little stars before her blurred vision. A small sense of realization tried to take forefront in her mind, but all she could see now was the distorted image of the very man she had loved more than anything and anyone else. Her voice was so quiet, so quiet that she barely heard it over the rush of blood in her veins. “W-what happened to you?”

“You tell me, Doc,” the man replied, casting aside the ruined half of the staff. He looked her right in the eyes and the woman felt like he was peering straight into her soul. She could feel the very cold of his metal claws right at her heart, just waiting to squeeze.

“I tried… I tried to bring you back…” Angela tried, tears were coming up more freely now. Maybe it was the desperation kicking in. Maybe it was the lingering adrenaline. Her knees felt weak and she wanted to vomit. “It should have worked. Th-this was not what I had intended-”

Angela didn’t expect a reply.

“You knew exactly what you were doing,” the man responded. “You made this. You are responsible.”

“I-” Angela began to say something and then she started as she heard a commotion outside. Her team had finally noticed her absence in the span of time she had been gone and out of their sight. When she had turned her eyes from the window, the man was gone.

“ _Liebling_ …?” Angela called out and before she could feel the first shards of her heart being broken again, she felt an odd wind at the corner of her mouth. It was almost like a kiss. Then, there was the ghostly touch of a hand on her neck that gave her shudders.

The woman’s lips had quivered as the start of a smile tried to form but ultimately she was on her knees and sobbing into her hands when Tracer burst into the room in her bright blue light with Pharah right behind her.

The two other women had been more than shocked to find Angela so distraught and without her weapons. Pharah had seen the broken staff and discarded blaster on the ground outside as reason for foul play. Tracer had tried to give Pharah a look to hold off on her theories for the moment and to get their friend to better safety. Angela had walked on numb legs and listened with deaf ears. At some point, Jack had been alerted and he had called Lúcio back to calm down Angela.

The Brazilian had taken one look at her and asked for the group to give her space, tuning his weapon to a specific song and giving her a headset to be more immersed. She had been unconscious in moments. Thankfully and without a single word to her teammates about her disappearance or sudden condition.

She had awoken at the new base in her rooms and alone. The last part had not surprised her but it still stung. The face of a dead man made her stomach clench in on itself and tears almost welled fresh in her eyes as her heart twisted.

Her fingers found the necklace at her breast unconsciously, twisting the ring in-between her fingertips as she stared up and empty at the ceiling. She thought it funny in a dark way as she remembered a saying of her father’s:

_“Some men are more haunted than the dead, some ghosts are more alive than man.”_

She laughed, brokenly and tears poured down her cheeks, fresh and anew.

**Author's Note:**

> r u okay  
> >translations:  
> "mi querida" - my darling  
> "erhöre mich, Gott verdammt" - [lit.] answer me, god damn it  
> "liebling" - darling


End file.
